
Top 100 Erica Jong Quotes
#1. I thought Erica Jong's Fear of Flying was one of the biggest pieces of crap that I've ever read in my life.
Helen Reddy
#2. You reach a point in life where you realize that you might as well do what you need to do, because your being loved or not being loved is really a function of the people you encounter and not of yourself. That is an immensely liberating insight.
Erica Jong
#3. The earth is God's book but in our blindness, we have obliterated letters so we may say God has abandoned us. It is we who are illiterate.
Erica Jong
#4. Motherhood cannot finally be delegated. Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle; cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers ... but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do.
Erica Jong
#5. I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
Erica Jong
#6. Good sex is a mystery. Perhaps humping and pumping is not a mystery, but good sex is a mystery, and how human beings become truly intimate remains a mystery.
Erica Jong
#7. In any triangle, who is the betrayer, who the unseen rival, and who the humiliated lover? Oneself, oneself, and no one but oneself!
Erica Jong
#8. Surviving means being born over and over.
Erica Jong
#9. It is hard to open yourself to someone who might really love you. I kept trying to drive Ken away and he kept passing the test by staying.
Erica Jong
#10. What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.
Erica Jong
#11. I've not ceased being fearful, I've gone ahead despite the pounding in my heart that says: turn back, turn back, you'll die if you go too far.
Erica Jong
#12. Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past.
Erica Jong
#13. Rendall's first law of jealousy: jealousy does the cock harder and pussy wetter.
Erica Jong
#14. We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
Erica Jong
#15. There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.
Erica Jong
#16. In loving life you love what can't survive ...
Erica Jong
#17. Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.
Erica Jong
#18. I am thinking of the onion again ... Not self-righteous like the proletarian potato, nor a siren like the apple. No show-off like the banana. But a modest, self-effacing vegetable, questioning, introspective, peeling itself away, or merely radiating halos like ripples.
Erica Jong
#19. How could one create life with someone who represented death?
Erica Jong
#20. Who were my fictitious witches and what did they mean? Never ask that of yourself while writing. It may stop you cold. Just trust that if you believe in your characters, others will too. ... Whenever I thought too critically about my work, I couldn't write.
Erica Jong
#21. Every time we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about five hundred feet (leaving my stomach in my mouth) I vowed to give up sex, bacon, and air travel if I ever made it back to terra firma in one piece.
Erica Jong
#23. Not everybody has to be a parent. In fact, in an overpopulated world where our resources are shrinking, it would be wonderful if people who didn't want children felt free to say so. In the 1970s, there was more tolerance for the idea that not everybody needs to be a biological parent.
Erica Jong
#24. I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper.
Erica Jong
#25. Tis true that tho' People can transcend their Characters in Times of Tranquillity, they can ne'er do so in Times of Tumult.
Erica Jong
#26. I think men have always been afraid of women's sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that.
Erica Jong
#27. I am against censorship. I prefer the chaos of uncontrollable communication of all sorts to selective banning of certain materials. I do not think human beings can be trusted to be above politics and to promote the common good. One group's common good is another group's evil.
Erica Jong
#28. Is there no Villain in this World who doth not regard himself as a poor abus'd Innocent, no She-Wolf who doth not think herself a Lamb, no Shark who doth not fancy that she is a Goldfish?
Erica Jong
#29. I think I've become more cynical about sex. Meaning, I don't think sex in and of itself leads to an epiphany.
Erica Jong
#30. My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.
Erica Jong
#31. You're not too fat; you're just in the wrong country.
Erica Jong
#32. Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I'm doing something right.
Erica Jong
#33. It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.
Erica Jong
#34. If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.
Erica Jong
#35. Courage is the only Magic worth having.
Erica Jong
#36. If I wrote that women could be unkind, I was considered a traitor
as if it were not worse treachery to pretend that all women were kind.
Erica Jong
#37. Everyone's a little crazy when you get inside their head ... it's only a matter of degree.
Erica Jong
#38. Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms!
Erica Jong
#39. Every woman artist has to kill her own grandmother. She perches on our shoulder whispering, Don't embarrass the family.
Erica Jong
#40. What I discovered was is that it's rare to find a person that you feel very intimate with, and you can sleep with lots of people and not find what you're looking for.
Erica Jong
#41. It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.
Erica Jong
#42. It was the old psychosomatic side-step. Everyone in my family dances it at every opportunity. You've given me a splitting headache! You've given me indigestion! You've given me crotch rot! You've given me auditory hallucinations! You've given me a heart attack! You've given me cancer!
Erica Jong
#43. The only people worth writing about are those about whom the last word cannot be said.
Erica Jong
#44. I don't think that sex necessarily produces intimacy.
Erica Jong
#45. Beware of the man who praises women's liberation. He's about to quit his job.
Erica Jong
#46. I think that Sappho expresses the orphaned part of ourselves. The orphaned part of ourselves that reaches out to passion for completion. That reaches out to motherhood for completion.
Erica Jong
#47. The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.
Erica Jong
#48. What storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank.
Erica Jong
#49. I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation.
Erica Jong
#50. Each artist or writer who works in Venice comes to believe that the city yields its most special secret to him or her alone.
Erica Jong
#51. There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.
Erica Jong
#52. I have enormous pride in the survival of the Jewish people, the cultural heritage of the Jewish people, but I'm not observant, and I don't belong to a synagogue. I don't go to temple on high holy days, but I'm proud to be Jewish.
Erica Jong
#53. Women really must have equal pay for equal work, equality in work at home, and reproductive choices. Men must press for these things also. They must cease to see them as "women's issues" and learn that they are everyone's issues - essential to survival on planet Earth.
Erica Jong
#54. I think a lot of people, when they read about a woman who acknowledges her sexuality and her feelings, get really scared. They say they want to be fearless, but in reality they're terrified. If they acknowledge their deepest feelings, they might have to change their lives.
Erica Jong
#55. The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach.
Erica Jong
#56. Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.
Erica Jong
#57. The sexuality doesn't end. It really doesn't. You're sexual your whole life, if you're a sexual person.
Erica Jong
#58. Men must be stripped of arrogance and women must become independent for any mutually nurturing alliance to endure between the sexes.
Erica Jong
#59. Before things are written down they don't exist in quite the same way. The act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded.
Erica Jong
#60. But at the bottom of all the gloom, there is a sense that we are responsible for each other
if not for each other's happiness. There is empathy, admiration, respect for the other's intelligence and honesty.
Erica Jong
#61. I know so many women in their fifties, sixties and seventies who delight in being on their own. It's amazing. They don't see any stigma attached to it. We don't need a man to prove our identity anymore.
Erica Jong
#62. The dilemma is that if one does not risk anything one risks even more.
Erica Jong
#63. Writers are always at the edge of the inferno, and the fire is licking at our toes. Luckily, this turns us on!
Erica Jong
#64. You must be very specific in your wishes or they'll come back to haunt you.
Erica Jong
#65. The camera creates a magical transformation. It's not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence ... Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don't feel any experience is complete unless it's recorded.
Erica Jong
#66. That's what a writer is -- a conqueror of fears.
Erica Jong
#67. Never follow a dog act. You know you're on the skids when you play yourself in the movie version of your life.
Erica Jong
#68. I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.
Erica Jong
#69. I mostly hate organized religion, which I think is a force for the oppression of women and creates warfare.
Erica Jong
#70. How did I get to be a grown-up? At times, I find myself still sitting on the hillside, plotting revenge against the adult world.
Erica Jong
#71. Flesh is merely a lesson. We learn it & pass on.
Erica Jong
#72. Harriet van Horne He makes love to me expertly, mechanically, coldly ... He's pressing all my buttons, as if I were a pocket calculator.
Erica Jong
#73. Beware the Lure of a handsome Face, the all too ready Assumption that the lovely Façade must needs have lovely Chambers within; for as 'tis with Great Houses, so, too, with Great Men.
Erica Jong
#74. The desire for magic cannot be eradicated. Even the most supposedly rational people attempt to practice magic in love and war. We simultaneously possess the most primitive of brain stems and the most sophisticated of cortices. The imperatives of each coexist uneasily.
Erica Jong
#76. We've lost more men to homosexuality than we ever did in two world wars.
Erica Jong
#77. Nothing human was worth denying. Even if it was unspeakably ugly, we could learn from it, couldn't we? Or could we? I never questioned that at all.
Erica Jong
#78. Hate generalizes; love is particular.
Erica Jong
#79. It was unimaginable what happens to you when you get known for a book that everybody reads, or that everybody has heard of. If the book is said to be sexy, the crazies come out of the woodwork.
Erica Jong
#80. You're afraid he'll leave you and you'll fall apart. You don't know that you can get along without him and you're afraid to find out because then your whole potty theory will come tumbling down. You'll have to stop thinking of yourself as weak and dependent and you hate that.
Erica Jong
#81. The older we get, the more Jewish we become in my family.
Erica Jong
#82. I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.
Erica Jong
#83. We write poems / as leaves give oxygen - / so we can breathe.
Erica Jong
#84. A person's not free if their freedom has to be "given".
Erica Jong
#85. Ken, my husband, just smelled like he belonged to me. I'm not talking about hygiene. I'm talking about when you hug him, he either feels like a member of your tribe or not. It's their scent.
Erica Jong
#86. You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
Erica Jong
#87. I loved Aphrodite from the first and steeped myself in her legends. My mother told me that in ancient times her rituals were bloody and cruel, but I only half believed it.
Erica Jong
#88. At certain historic moments, grandparents took on childrearing responsibilities. In many cultures, they still do. Chinese grandparents who are able to retire at 55 are seen all over Beijing bouncing grandbabies. In the United States, we can't afford to retire at 55.
Erica Jong
#89. She lives as if she is constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away "from all this". All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?
Erica Jong
#90. Of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.
Erica Jong
#91. I see the whole episode in my memory as if it were a very crisply photographed black and white movie. Directed by Bergman perhaps.We are playing ourselves in the movie version. If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves !
Erica Jong
#92. Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.
Erica Jong
#93. Is perception equivalent to existence?
Erica Jong
#94. I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly.
Erica Jong
#95. If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.
Erica Jong
#96. If I loved him, would I censor my writing to please him? If I married him, would I force my writing to be married as well?
Erica Jong
#97. It was clear to me that thinking yourself superior was a sure sign of being inferior and that thinking yourself extraordinary was a sure sign of being ordinary.
Erica Jong
#98. Writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.
Erica Jong
#99. He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.
Erica Jong
#100. I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
Erica Jong
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